Twenty-five to thirty men gathered that day at Franklin, across the river from Boonville. They had answered a newspaper advertisement calling for a group of men to make a trading expedition to the West. Each man provided $10 which bought supplies for the entire party. They wouldn’t reach their destination until mid-November and weren’t back in Missouri until the next year, but this expedition was the one that opened one of the most famous paths to the West – the Santa Fe Trail.
